Installing Gentoo with systemd, btrfs and systemd-boot

januschp · n00b Joined: 11 Oct 2017 Posts: 3

Hi,

I am trying to replicate my ArchLinux setup with systemd, systemd-boot and btrfs with gentoo. So far, everthing is setuped. However, when I am trying to boot into the system, it halts and spits out the following errors:

The filesystem /dev/sda2, mounted at /newroot does not contain a valid init=/sbin/init
Could not find the root block device in /dev/sda2

I do have the base-system on /dev/sda2 and the boot efi partition is on /dev/sda1. When I install the efi boot loader with bootctl --path=/boot install and check it afterwards with bootctl status, it shows in the loader section:
Product: n/a
Partition: n/a
File: n/a
Nevertheless it seems to find the Boot Loader Binaries and has generated the correct Boot loader entries.

I have compiled app-sys/systemd with the systemd and gnuefi USE flags, because systemd-boot could not be merged after the installation of apps-sys/systemd. I tried to soft link /usr/lib/systemd/systemd /sbin/init but it did not help. I have no idea what to try next. Following the systemd section in the gentoo wiki could not provide a solution to my problem.
Does anybody have an idea how to proceed?

Cheers,
Janusch

xaviermiller · Posted: Wed Oct 11, 2017 6:38 pm Post subject:

Hi,

Please give us the bootloader parameters you gave, it seems you forgot to tell the kernel to switch to systemd with the init= parameter
See https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Systemd
_________________
Kind regards,
Xavier Miller

januschp · n00b Joined: 11 Oct 2017 Posts: 3

Hi,

my booloader parameters are:
title Gentoo Linux
linux /vmlinuz-linux #I have renamed the kernel
initrd /initramfs-linux.img #I have renamed the ramdisk
options root=LABEL=ROOT rootflags=subvol=@ rw #/dev/sda2 is labeled ROOT

Thats what I put into the /boot/loader/entries/gentoo.conf.

Cheers
Janusch

januschp · n00b Joined: 11 Oct 2017 Posts: 3

Hi,
know the error turned into "could not find the root block device in ." during boot after reinstalling gentoo with the same specs as before.
Does anyone have an idea?

Cheers
Janusch

WvR · Posted: Fri Dec 29, 2017 9:35 am Post subject:

Perhaps you already solved the problem, but allow me to help.

I recently experienced very similar problems.

When you get the message "does not contain a valid ...", it means that the disk was succesfully mounted and the start-up scripts are looking for a certain file (/sbin/init in your case). Either this file does not exist or it is "invalid".

Possible solution: boot the machine from USB (I use System Rescue CD but you can use any "liveUSB" or "liveDVD"). Then mount the disk, for example: